Sunday, February 1, 2009

2 week weaving

Our assignment: I'm skipping a bunch of the preamble... "Taking what you learned from looking back on your past work, create new piece that strives to complete these four aspects of the Creative Process -- Prepwork, Incubation, Execution and Reflection." There's a whole bunch more on what should be said here, but my time just doesn't give me the space to dwell on more and also what we discussed in class. On the assignment; all I can think is that I really want to do a weaving, but 2 weeks (with a full time job) isn't enough time. Last week I did so well at keeping the project within the time I had -- no question, I spent a bunch of time on my self portrait; all my time was spent moving forward, always thinking what could I do next, what should I glue now that needs time to dry while working on the the next part. "Keep it Simple" was my mantra, I was pretty much done Sunday afternoon, all there was to do Monday night was pack up the project. So even though part of my brain was basking in the "Keep it Simple" mantra and having some kind of a life beyond class, the other part of me is yelling "Do a weaving! do something you want!" "Do that project you already have planned! it could be submitted for the weaving coverence coming up, instead of doing yet another class assignment that I have no place to display or is not a weaving to add to my "body of work" which doesn't exist.

The other half of me is going "no way you have time for that!" So ignoring practicality and sound judgment, I finally settled on, if you want to weave, weave. If you do nothing else but work on this project, you might get it woven and off the loom -- not "finished" but far enough to be able to bring it in to class and write the evaluation paper (our real assignment).

So here I am on Sunday (with time to write this blog), on the schedule which I think will get my weaving to the point of completion I'm hoping for. I had an idea ready to go, with size determined, I measured out warp on Wednesday and weft on Thursday. Theater tickets took up Friday night but I was ready to dye yarn on Saturday (10 hours) and finished Sunday afternoon. the yarn needs to dry, so at this point I'm as far as I can go. Time to catch up on writing the next version of our artist statment, this blog and laundry.

Photos: This is my dyeing lab -- right in the kitchen, I cover as much as I can with plastic, use pots that are only for dyeing, but still need to keep careful watch on anything I slosh around. At the end of a session the whole place needs to be wiped down, the sink and counter given the comet scrub for major colorings and any splashes that have occured. Yarn then gets hung outside or in the garage for drying. Not the ideal situation, but it works for now.